A lot of that has to do with not accomplishing much in-game.  I actually had started working on a post about how the changes to raiding affected guilds like mine and people like me.  Things became a little stagnant.

Then LFR came out and that changed everything for guilds like mine and people like me (if they wanted it to, of course).  Epic post abandoned.  Things became fun…and then quickly went back to stagnant.  Dechion actually captured a bit of the LFR feeling here.

But we’re also playing less WoW.  No, we didn’t switch to SW:TOR (well, sort of…I did, but I play very infrequently.)  We’re playing less games in general. 

I went to Texas for two weeks before Christmas.  I came home to a massive wake up call; I had to sort out my priorities and I had to make some lifestyle changes.  The priorities were fairly easy.  Lifestyle changes are a work in progress, but things are going in the right direction. 

So, we’ve gone from playing lots of WoW and talking about it lots.  Cata meant playing lots, but we didn’t have nearly as much to talk about.  And now that we rarely play, you can surely imagine how little there is to talk about the game now.

No, we haven’t quit.  And there’s always the chance we’ll play more when MOP comes out.

We had a good run over two years and even managed to get linked by WoW Insider once.  So no complaints.  But as it stands, I wouldn’t expect too many more posts from The Wayward Initiative.  They may happen, but likely few and far between

For those stalker-licious people, you can still find me (@darthregis) on Twitter.  And for those that care enough to have hung out over the years, I sincerely thank you.

Until then,

Reeg

As such, we’ve made some plans around it:   Take Friday off, do some chores in the morning, watch stream, eat chips, etc.  Saturday, hang out with Vidyala and Vosskah and watch the Con with them.  Some fun coupled with relaxation.  Good times!

Well, because I have plans for the weekend, people suddenly decided they wanted to invite me to things.  I turned down a round of golf for tomorrow because I have plans.  I turned down box seats for a Calgary Flames game on Saturday because I have plans.

I look forward to those plans…but did golf and box seats have to be THIS WEEKEND?!?!  *shakes fist into the air*

I know ultimatums are kind of silly, but Blizz…hear me now…this Blizzcon better be freakin’ amazing.

PS:  You may want to check out the book, “The Patrol“.

Unfortunately, there just hasn’t been a whole lot to say in the last few months.  The guild was a little under-staffed over the summer months, although we didn’t miss out on any raiding because we weren’t raiding in the first place.  Regardless, it made getting groups for heroics a little tricky at times. 

I mentioned awhile back that I’ve made my way onto Twitter and managed to start following and chatting with a few interesting folk from the WoW Blog’o'sphere.  From that, I’ve found a few people that are in the same province and found a couple of bloggers that even live in the same city.  Since then, both Chawa and I have ventured out to meet Vidyala and Vosskah on two occasions.  Even though, as Draenei, it’s all their fault that the Burning Legion showed up to Outland in the first place, they’re pretty awesome folk.

More recently, the guild is picking up in activity a bit.  We’ve gone in to do Firelands trash, just to check out the place and take advantage of rep rewards.  Our first time in, we were doing the trash with seven people.  The last couple of times, we’ve done it with nine and ten people.  We even tried Beth’tilac once…which, as one might suspect, was a complete disaster.  It was neat to see, but we really didn’t know what the hell we were doing.   My hopes is that if we start getting 10 guildies on regularly, we actually go into the T11 raids and do those bosses.  We, as a guild, don’t overgear the fights, nor are we practiced enough that the fights will be easy.  Post-nerf or not.  (Please note, this isn’t meant as a criticism – it’s just my perception of things.)

In regards to Patch 4.3, which is currently on the PTR, well, it holds some interesting changes.  The ones that catch my mind the most are the buffs to Fire Mage DPS and some tanking tweaks for Death Knights (30 second CD on Outbreak…hell yeah!)  But those are relatively “small picture”. 

The “big picture” change for me is the introduction of the Looking For Raid tool (henceforth, LFR).  For those of you not-in-the-know, how the hell did you find this blog?  Er, I mean, the LFR tool is basically a clone of the Looking For Dungeon (LFD) tool that was introduced in Wrath.  The notable features about this tool are:  It’s for 25-person raiding only, it only works for the 4.3 raid (at this point), and it essentially introduces a toned down version of the regular raid (aka: easy mode).  There are some other little features I won’t divulge into because it’s not critical to me.  While I don’t like the fact it’s 25-man only, it allows small guilds like mine to group up with others to see some content.  Also, while I know some people may scoff at the idea for an easy mode, this is only good news from my perspective.  I’m in a very casual guild and we don’t put any demands on our members outside of “don’t be an asshole”.  So, we can hopefully still be successful in raids, even if we also happen to be ”under-geared’ or fairly rusty with our skills.

In other news, this weekend is Blizzcon.  While we’re not going, we did manage to order the live stream.  With that said, I’m kind of flustered that the posted schedule is a bit vague.  I’m not sure what I should or shouldn’t be watching!  Like, I wouldn’t mind missing some lore stuff, but I would hate to miss any announcements about Diablo 3 or the next WoW expansion.  But I’m looking forward to be vicariously part of the experience.

Also, Hallows End starts today.  I hope to pick up some fancy rings and a new Headless Horseman’s helm for my DK.  I have the old one…but my DPS helm kinda sucks, so an upgrade would be fantastic.  And my mage could use the HH mount.

Anyway, I’m done rambling right now.  I’m not going back to read or edit this post, mostly because I’m lazy and just felt the need to ramble for a good half hour over my lunch break.  I hope to collect and organize my thoughts on Cataclysm, one year after release.  My own little spin on things from casual land.  But for now, it’s back to work.

Lok’tar ogar, friends.

Hooray!

It is my absolute pleasure to feature this post from Reverend Unk, both friend and guildie.

He offers us a frank reminder of how tough it can be to new to the game and that we should take the time to help out some of our newer friends.

Thanks for the contribution, Fal!

Please keep reading, after the cut:

Earlier today I found myself in a situation that I didn’t feel competent enough to deal with properly. I’m fiercely independent; I really don’t like asking for help, but during the middle of this I appealed to some of my guildies on Twitter to help as they could. And that situation was that of a low-level guildmate whom was new to the game, and I hesitate to mention it, but young of age as well, and was feeling a bit left out. Well, a lot left out, truthfully.

I think the fact that I was in a raid at the time, and in answering his questions truthfully, mentioned that he wasn’t likely to be able to join a non-battleground raid until 85, are what brought his feelings of isolation to the surface. But the feelings were there, probably lingering in the back of his head, for who knows how long. But to see the phrase “So I’m of no use to the guild” show up in my chat-log is heart-rending for me, in no small part because I was there once.

I replied to the above phrase by telling him not to feel that way, not to feel rushed to level to 85. To level at his own pace, and enjoy the game along the way. That a lot of being max level is being bored, or doing things that just generally aren’t, when you get down to it, that pleasant. That the people in TZI are some of the nicest, coolest people I’ve met offline or on, and that no matter how long it takes him to get there, the rest of the guys are just awesome to hang out with. That it’s probably been about six months since I grouped with anybody in the guild, but I’ll still log on just to chill (leaving out the bit where I generally don’t say anything to any of my friends while on). All of this is true, and I mant what I said, but I got the feeling that what I was saying wasn’t enough. This is when I sent my plea out on twitter.

And then I did something I’m not entirely comfortable with having done. I offered to group with him on my hunter and level together (that part I’m okay with), and also offered, essentially power-levelling via dungeon runs with my death knight (that part I’m not). The latter portion went out with heavy repetition of synonyms of the phrase “if levelling fast is that important to you”. And I do feel that if levelling fast so he can do more stuff with the guild is important to him, I should help. I’m just unsure of the method I offered out there.

Okay, part of the reason I have misgivings about this offer is because he’s young. His spelling is terrible (but forgivable), and when there was a misunderstanding about a question he mentioned asking his dad. Also, he’s a hunter. Now I hate myself for having these prejudices because back in vanilla when I raided full-time, our best rogue was only 16, and my main (and only, at that point) toon was a hunter. I’m worried that the increase of levelling speed will be inversely proportional of his understanding of the class. I don’t want him to be unhappy, but I don’t want to be responsible for the creation of a “huntard” and make a lot more people unhappy.

I also believe that at least some of his feeling of isolation within the guild comes from his play-time. He tends to play from noon on. I’m not entirely sure until when, as that’s where the misunderstanding came about. But the vast majority of his play-time seems to be when those of us in the guild whom are employed (ie all the adults save myself) are at work. He just really doesn’t see too much of us on the whole. Not that any of us see a whole lot of us right now, what with it being summer, but we see each other a lot more than he sees us.

We also can’t forget that levelling – even now, with all the zone overhauls and such – can be fairly slow when one doesn’t have the benefits of heirloom gear, and having done all these quests (or similar enough to be damn near indistinguishable) umpteen times before. I didn’t think to ask, until now, but he’s probably not using any addons, and certainly not ones like QuestHelper.

In a lot of ways, the reason this gets to me as much as it does, is that my experience levelling back in vanilla was very similar. It was different in quite a lot of ways too, but it was close enough for me to identify with. Let’s hop into the WayBack Machine. Kael’Thas (US) opened on October 19, 2005. I rolled my very first WoW character on the day that it opened as a Dwarven Paladin (I had to look up the open date, but I do distinctly remember that I started playing the day my server started. Also, holy crap, I’ve been playing WoW off -and-on for almost six years! I just realized that.). I spent about a week playing that guy, before I decided that the Alliance wasn’t for me, and then rerolled as a Troll Hunter named Zarica. I made three friends along the way, a mage, a rogue and a priest. I ended up forming a guild with the mage and the rogue, and we were happily nubbing things up. Around level twenty I ran into a priest in the Barrens. That priest, Diabolica (I sat here for twenty minutes trying to remember her name), and I became really close friends. Probably better friends than I was with my then-guildmates.

Diabolica was levelling a character on KT to join a raiding guild her friends were in. I can’t remember what that guild was called, but it’s not important in the grand scheme of this story. She’d had experience as a raid healer in the past, and the more she talked about raiding, the more fascinated I became by it. By level thirty, I was just pushing myself as hard as I could to level as quickly as I could so that I could join her guild – not realizing that I’d have to apply. I was a nub, remember. I wasn’t satisfied with a day’s play session if I didn’t gain at least one level. So the day finally came that I hit level 60, and I applied for membership to this raiding guild that my friend was in.

Along the way, I’d left my friends in the guild I was in behind. They’d lent me the money to buy my first mount, they’d helped me level enchanting, and I hadn’t even mentioned that I was applying to join another guild. I ended up being denied to that guild as I had no previous experience in any of the raids available at the time. My friends, in the current guild, that I had essentially treated like shit, then realized how much raiding meant to me (please remember, that as awful as what I did was {and make no mistake, I firmly believe it was awful}, “casual” content really was damn near non-existent), and consequently arranged a guild merger with an entry level raiding guild by the name of Iniquitous.

I did say that this was different in a lot of ways. The similarity, and the point that I was trying to make, albeit in a round-about “I’m a terrible person” way is that I understand the desire to be max level. To want to raid and being too low level. To want to hang out with my friends in guild (although, in my story the friends I wanted to hang out with were in a different guild than the friends I was already in a guild with. See above, re: “I’m a terrible person”.) and do stuff with them. I understand these desires, because I had them once.

So please, if you have people whom are low-level in your guild and you know (or even suspect) that they might be new to the game, reach out to them. Try and find out if they’re having any issues, or need any help with levelling. Or even if they just want to have some company. Roll a lowbie. Do something. Help them enjoy the World of Warcraft as a lore-rich environment, full of entertaining quests and challenging dungeons, before they become the people who are bored with the game, that so often end up writing WoW-related blogs (myself included). If they become disenfranchised with WoW upon hitting max level, or they get burnt out on raiding, fine. But let them cancel their accounts at max level, not halfway along the journey.

As the title of the post suggests, the meal of the day is Beef Bourguignon.  Recipe, pics, and such are all after the cut.

It should be noted that this recipe easily feeds four with one or two portions of leftovers.  Things can be halved if you’re cooking for less.  Or keep it the same if you like leftovers.

First and foremost, your food mats:

• 900 g (2 lbs) of stewing beef.  Pre-cubed if you’re lazy like me.  Trim excess fat as desired.
• 250 g (1/2 lbs) of bacon.  Or 500 g (1 lb) if you discard a lot of bacon fat.
• 4 small onions (I used one large onion).  White, yellow, or red onions – whichever you’d prefer.
• 2 – 3 cloves of fresh garlic.
• 4 peppercorns.  Yup.  4 peppercorns.  Add one or two if you so desire.
• 1 1/2 Tablespoons of all-purpose flour.
• 1 teaspoon of salt.
• 10-ish small mushrooms (or none if you dislike them, as I do).
• 1 bottle of RED wine.  Whichever kind you like most.  If you don’t know, Merlot is pretty decent.  I know the wine’s for cooking, but slightly more expensive wines tend to taste better IMHO.  Your call, of course.

Now your cooking tools:

• Frying pan
• Oven-safe Pot/roasting dish or slow cooker (I use the latter.  ”Just set it and forget it!”)
• Medium size bowl or spare plate
• Spatula
• Sieve or strainer

Now, the actual cooking part:

If you want to capture more of the wine “bouquet”, put the beef in your pot or slow cooker and put enough wine to cover the meat.  Cover and let it marinate over night.  This gives it a stronger taste and as far as I’m concerned, it is also better.

Beef after marinating overnight.

** Should you be using a pot and the oven, you’ll need to pre-heat the oven to 300F (adjust to any finicky nuances of your oven). **

Chop the bacon into small pieces and fry.

Peel and chop the onions and add to the frying bacon.  Sautee until the onion is soft.

Bacon + Onion = Delicious!

Remove the bacon and onions from the frying pan into the medium sized bowl/spare plate.  Cover and put in the fridge for later.

Remove the beef from the pot with the sieve OR drain and reserve the wine marinade.  (Using a crockpot, the former is easier and uses less dishes!)

Brown the beef in the hot bacon/onion remains in the frying pan.  When brown, sprinkle with the all-pupose flour.

Bacon/Onions aside, beef browning, and reserved wine marinade.

Add to the oven-safe pot/slow cooker – salt, peppercorns, garlic (minced), wine marinade, and beef.  If the beef isn’t fully covered, use any remaining wine to cover the beef.

I think next time I'll use a couple more. Tad more salt, too.

Cover and cook for two hours at medium-high heat in the crockpot (or 300F in the oven).  Stir occasionally (once or twice is fine in that two hour stint.)

Add bacon/onion that you set aside earlier and cook for an additional two hours.  Stir occasionally (once or twice is fine in that two hour stint.)

After the 4 hours, sautee the mushrooms in a bit of butter and stir into the pot.  Cook for an additional 10 minutes.

Serve with whatever side dishes you like.  Potatoes or rice are my personal favourites.  Steamed carrots also go nicely with this dish.

End result! (We didn't have carrots...d'oh!)